The Monster Who Chased Death
by Hopeless Desires
Summary: To break the cage, you must watch them die, again and again, forever the survivor you will be. – Time loop. Reincarnated!OC-centric. Alternate timeline.


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><p><strong>. . . * . . .<strong>

**/ **chapter** 00 /**

_The Monster Who Inhaled_

**features **_a peter pan boy – who isn't a boy – a little sister – unexpected events – proof of how fallible an immortal is – a lesson on philosophy – and Alec's brother wakes from a night terror – such horrifying laughter_

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**Warning: **Made up spoilers, as in I made them up for the sake of the story. Alternate timelines and universes are mentioned. Sort of complex…? I haven't really sketched out the plot yet, but I need to write this or else I'll just entirely forget about it. OCs. Male! OC. OC/Canon Character relationships might happen. _Attack on Titan, _gd. If you even watched/read the anime/manga, then you really don't need to be warned, you masochist. This is also my first serious attempt at first person writing, so my writing might be crappy at times. Also, this prologue was hasty and I'm really sorry.

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><p>I <strong>disclaim <strong>ownership of SnK and the idea of a time loop/reincarnation. As a matter of fact, if you want to know from whom I got inspired by the time loop idea, head over to **XxZuiliu**'s _Onwards Till Dawn_, it's awesome it inspired the time loop idea. And yes, I did ask for permission. As for the reincarnation idea, it belongs to whomever first came with it. AKA Buddha.

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><p><strong> unedited /**

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><p><em>It smells like blood.<em>

_No…that's a bit vague, isn't it? It's unneeded, too, yes?_

_It always smells like blood._

_But. But it doesn't always sound like Petra's screams, amplified by ears deaf to everything but despair._

_This time, I was capable of saving her when we were chased by the Female Titan, wasn't I?_

**(last time she'd embraced a tree, squashed like a useless cockroach, neck tilted back even though she'd always complained of her deplorable flexibility)**

_It's futile, though. She still died in the end._

_They all died._

_(Immortality, to me, has never exactly worked in the subjection that an immortal never dies. _

_I'd prefer them dead than immortal, like the immortality I have._

_Does that make me a monster…?_

_Monster is a subjective term, and monsters aren't exactly good or bad. Eren was a monster, wasn't he? And he wasn't exactly bad, in my opinion._

_Then again, never take an immortal's opinion. Particularly once whose life centered on death and was handy with a sword._

_One whose immortality was defined by his death and would most definitely remember you _**next time.**_)_

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><p>"Hadrian!"<p>

The sky is gray with mottled clouds dripping rain. Troublesome rain; made it hard to fight titans. How many had old TDMGs malfunctioned under the rain? How many horses slipped under pavement, soldiers, children and adults, sliding against unreliable grounding? Ah, yes, the casualties had always been higher on those helpful days. After all, wherever shall we get most of our water from if not rain? And then there was the challenge in predicting if these were tears on Eren's face when _he _died or if it was rain.

(And isn't it funny? He was the closest person I could trust, the closest person to understand what I always felt – besides Eren, who was a monster and somewhat understood -, the strongest of them all, and yet. And yet Levi died.

Because, you see, strength is such an fallible thing. What is strength, really, when someone will always be stronger, when no matter how _strong they are they will always, __**always**_ -)

Stupid rain.

So why was I torturing myself out here, emptily staring at the sky? The rain droplets hurt when they dropped into my eyes, and the burning feeling that came with it was too reminiscent of the urge to cry. In fact, why was I lingering? Lingering was bad, especially in memories and after a kill, because you could die, so always, always move, run run run away like a coward –

Stop it.

_Breathe. Stop thinking._

But I can't. I need to remember, or else I'll surrender to sleep. Sleeping would be nice. Even now, when it was safe and there wasn't an unexpected attack or sighting every time my head hit the **notenotenoteoldcar**, I couldn't sleep for many hours. Sleeping was a challenge of itself.

Hence the ungodly shadows under my eyes.

"_Hadrian!" _I let a breath out, and a smile slip on my lips. I didn't like pretending to smile – I've always been a bit idealistic when it came to that – but these loops it had become harder and harder to be genuinely happy. Now, I had to force half-smiles – they were always harder to point out as fake – and think of happy moments that were _far in between_.

But this one?

My little sister has always been a person I could be sincere with. Not entirely, as she was too intuitive, too observing, too _Alec _to completely relax around. And she was too much my little sister for me to even think of lying to her.

Unless, of course, I had to.

That was bad, wasn't it? How many times had she cornered and interrogated me? But then, there were these times she'd died before she could act on her suspicions and by the time she stopped dying, I'd learned how to put on masks sufficient enough to deceive her. These masks wouldn't be needed yet; the past had always been the subject of happy moments and Alec hadn't _really_ developed that perceptive, suspicious attitude until Recon Corps days.

"Yeah?" I dropped from the tree, semi squatting and _knees not over toes, how many times has that paralyzed someone's legs?_

"Brother, your escapades are entertaining, but try not to do it on a rainy day such as this one." Alec dryly said, imitating the speech pattern our rich neighbors had. She'd always hated them; always stopping her as she passed their front yard to scold her about negligible matters, _your skirt is too hiked up, you have mud on your shoes, your hair is messy, you smell like food, and oh my, what thick leg hair you have, my dear! _One thing this world has that my original – my lips curled – world had was the 'amazing' standards of beauty placed on (rich) women. Leg hair, while not important, was noticed when it was thicker or darker colored since most of the citizens here were of light pigment ancestry, mostly European. She grimaced as she lifted her skirt – she'd always been fond of skirts, although there was that universe where she absolutely loathed them – and pointedly stuffed her head in my face so that I could see the mud on her dark strands. My muscles tensed to avoid moving out of the way her head-butt.

"Well," I said, smile still nice and sweet, nothing _mischievous _or insulting, "It isn't my fault you have selective vision when it comes to branches."

"Not hilarious."

"Give your brother an ego boost, please."

"Fake confidence in your comedic abilities won't help you foster them to be even average." Her tone slipped into that dry tone that was exclusively hers as she found refuge under a well-endowed tree.

"Yes it does. How am I going to attempt joking if nobody gave me the time of day when I was still a novice?" I stepped past her, heading out of the park. Alec lifted my jacket and hid her head under it as she followed. The heat of her face nearly pressed against my back was welcome, although not necessary.

Still, it was _adorable_.

Alec's shirt was discarded as soon as we entered our house. She'd always hated being forced to abide by public decency when most boys could get away with it, but she'd grudgingly excluded her exhibitionism to home. It was development from the days in which she'd decide she didn't need shirts nor skirts and pranced around in underwear.

The smell of paint – of Father – had always calmed me down. My home was akin to an artist's studio back in my original universe – except these memories were incredibly vague, and I tried not to linger on them. It wasn't hard when you had to repeat a life time (a short one, but _still_) again and again – the smells were of dry paint and fruits, drawings were competing over space on the walls, and father's clothes were always dirtied with splotches of color.

Father owned a store down the street. It was really a two room, one floor building wherein he sold his art. Most people ordered specific drawings, some just gave a prompt – say, 'Faded Dawn' – and left the rest to him. It wasn't a very satisfying job, in terms of money, but mother was in the Military and the pay was enormous, although that meant the amount of times we've seen her was close to the amount of times I'd seen the Easter Bunny back in my first life. Although I had been fond of a chocolate bar that featured Easter Bunny as a mascot, and the memory of the 'Under the Easter Bunny Mascot – a serial killer?' scandal about my (lacrosse? Soccer?) school team's mascot was still somewhat _there_, not up and left already.

I lingered before entering the threshold.

My future, settled around my shoulders, kindly reminded me of the imminent future.

Or, rather, the unpredictable future.

And, if I was right, then the day were the difference between this reality and the last one would be cemented was soon.

Inhale.

- I never did let go of the exhale.

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><p><em>"<em>_…What are you doing, brother?"_

_No response._

_"…'nee-chan? Are you okay?"_

_Silence._

_A step closer._

_"Got you!" A laugh. _

_"'rian!" _

_Ba-thump. Ba-thump. _

_What sort of desperate, horrifying laugh was that?_

_"No fair! Why'd ya scare me? And I thought I caught ya cryin'!"_

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><p><strong>an:**

to clarify, Hadrian died. Again. and the last dialogue thing was from alec's (scattered) point of view. was hardian crying? no. this isn't the first time he'd died. was he wrapping his arms around himself, possibly shuddering.

Maybe.

And no, Hadrian wasn't supposed to be that sad. Next chapter will include a far more snarky, albeit thoughtful Hadrian.

So, I'm going to need someone who's read the entire manga to help me out a bit. I've only watched the anime and read spoilers, so I need someone to tell me where the anime drops off in the manga, and someone I can run time loops and character interactions by to check if they're canonically allegiant (matches the character's canon personality and the time loop could possibly happen) or not. Also, I need to know who died.

The only way I'll be able to continue this is if I get that special person to help me out. Also, just to make sure you know, the time loop idea is inspired by xXZuilliu's **Onwards Till Dawn **fanfiction. It's wonderfully sad. Go read it.

Gah. I will definitely come back to edit this chapter. One, it's too short, two, it's awful, three, there are omitted scenes. But what can I do? I would've forgotten this if I hadn't typed it out, and I can't add those scenes until **I get that beautiful, amazing person to wonderfully inform me about certain awesome things that are spoilers for this fic shall they be included in this a/n. I'll try not to spoil that wonderful advisor. Please PM me if you want to help me.**

On the other hand, since you've read this fanfic, you're already an awesome possums person.

PS, is this fandom dead? Or are there still people lurking in the archive reading, reviewing and writing SnK fanfics?

**Drop some reader feedback,**

_Hopeless Desires_

**There'll be a poll on my profile for the characters you most want Hadrian to interact with for the next few chapters. Your opinion will be taken into consideration, but ultimately, I'll choose. On the other hand, enthusiastic votes for a certain character will most definitely have that character included as soon as possible. **


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